Previews

Rock Band: World Tour

Of course, none of these features mean a thing if the rocking isn't hot. Over the course of three hours, we played about twenty songs and switched places regularly to get a feel for all the instruments, which are now pretty much finalized.

The biggest question I generally get asked around the office is about the Rock Band guitar, which is basically a three-fourths replica of a black-and-white Fender Stratocaster. While the guitar plays fine, it has a different feel than the SG and Xplorer models from previous Guitar Hero games. The fret buttons are a little wider, and the strum bar doesn't have any "click" to it, so it feels a little mushier than other models gamers might be used to.

This might not be a big deal, however, as most of the songs we played didn't have particularly tough guitar parts, even on Expert. One unannounced song also has some fun acoustic parts to play, once you get a feel for the new guitar and making the shifts from one three-note chord to another.

The drums, on the other hand, are a completely different story. On Expert, the drums will be a serious challenge even for real drummers, as it'll take some time to get a feel for all the little fills that take place throughout each song. Just getting through the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" on Hard was a challenge; the Stones' "Gimme Shelter' was easier, but there were still moments where we seemed on the precipice of failure. Maybe the greatest feature in Rock Band is the ability to "rescue" band mates if they fail a song, though after three strikes and you're on the bench for good.

Our playtest also gave us a chance to get a little more in-depth with the game's vocal mechanics. As we've mentioned in earlier previews, it plays out a lot like Karaoke Revolution, with lyrics scrolling across the top of the screen and indicating the relative pitch of the melody. It turned out the vocals were the hardest instrument for anyone to master, with perpetually low percentages of notes hit, and routine failures all around -- it'll take a few playthroughs to get a feel for when to cut your notes off so they don't bleed into the next measure and end a streak.

One nice thing about Rock Band is that it comes with a pretty decent microphone; you'll probably want to hit your local music store to pick up a mic stand of some kind. Another nice feature is the ability to balance out your own vocals with the recorded track on the fly using the gamepad without pausing the game. (We'll have more on Rock Band's head-to-head vocal multiplayer modes in a separate article this week.)

This only kicks off what's sure to be a flood of Rock Band info over the next month, as there's plenty of songs yet to be announced, further details on the controllers, and online playtesting to come. Also, it was announced this week that Rock Band's release date had been moved up; originally set for Black Friday, November 23 (the day after Thanksgiving), Rock Band is now set to be in stores a few days early on Tuesday, November 20th. Check back with GameSpy regularly, as we'll have plenty more on Rock Band in the weeks to come.